Mint Lamb Sausage Inspired by Jorgensen Farms {Charcutepalooza}

On a picturesque 65 acres in east central Ohio, there lies Jorgensen Farms, a biodynamic animal and vegetable operation. Proprietor Val (pictured below in blue) works the land guided by her distinguishing palette and eye for pleasing design. She builds vibrant soil through careful crop rotation and pasturing. Perhaps the most recognized crop is her mint grown especially for central Ohio based Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream's Backyard Mint flavor. You may click on pictures to enlarge them.

I attended the Ohio Lamb Chef's Day at Jorgensen Farms one cold and rainy day this May. The event included tours and tastings aimed at educating restaurant chefs. We walked through herb gardens near the farm houses and viewed sheep out to pasture on rolling hills. Two chilly day-old lambs visited in the arms of flower grower and livestock helper Roger Genter.

The meat of the event was a fascinating demonstration by Dr. Paul Kuber, associate professor of Animal Sciences at Ohio State University. He expertly butchered a lamb into cuts usable by restaurants and home cooks, sharing anatomy and culinary tidbits throughout. A six course sampling meal followed, using some of the cuts demonstrated.

At the end of the lamb cutting, a large bowl of scraps was left. Kuber shared that these could be used for sausage or other charcuterie. When the June Charcutepalooza challenge, stuffing, was announced, I knew what I had to make: mint lamb sausage, inspired by Jorgensen Farms.

Lamb mint sausage makes good use of the abundant mint and garlic scapes in our own backyard. We chose Ohio lamb and pork to keep the recipe local. The binding liquid included some of our own apple cider vinegar made last autumn.

As we have been stuffing sausage for a few years, the process runs quickly and smoothly now. Alex and Lil do most of the meat handling while I clean up behind them. From grind to bind to stuffing, a batch only takes about thirty minutes.

I served the sausage tonight with barley risotto and wilted homegrown greens. I highly recommend this hearty and healthy combination. It warmed us on a unseasonably cool evening, reminiscent of the chilly day I spent at the lovely Jorgensen Farms.

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Mint Lamb Sausage

Makes 10 7 inch links

2 pounds lamb shoulder, boned 1 pound pork shoulder, boned 0.9 oz kosher salt (a hair less than 2 tablespoons) 1/3 cup finely chopped fresh mint 1 1/2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh young garlic scapes 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar 1/4 cup water hog casings

1. Grind lamb and pork with a large die. 2. Transfer to a mixing bowl. Add salt, mint, and scapes. Mix with batter paddle to combine. 3. Slowly pour in apple cider vinegar and water while mixing on low speed. Continue mixing until sausage binds or becomes very sticky, approximately 5 minutes. 4. Stuff into hog casings and make links.

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Basement Charcuterie

If you home cure meat, this might be a familiar site:

Five pounds of saucisson sec and a fifteen pound serrano-style salted air-dryed ham hanging in our basement.   Both are made from the meat of Red, the hog we slaughtered in April.  The saucisson sec will hang for three to four weeks and be taken on our long back country canoe trip in July.  The ham will dry until the fall at the earliest.

Curing meat hanging from drop ceiling stringers is just one of the pitfalls of home charcuterie.

If you take up charcuterie like Alex has, you might also find yourself with hundreds of feet of dried hog intestine, i.e. casing, in the fridge, pictured above.  You'll probably have a stash of pink salt, that nitrite containing bacon flavoring good stuff.  Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie book will be nearby for recipes and advice on all types of curing.  You will have a meat grinder and possibly several other sharp and dangerous tools.

Of course you will also have the rewards:  spicy delicious chorizo, home cured guanciale (jowl bacon pictured above), salt cod, fresh breakfast sausage and the experience to preserve whatever comes your way.

Make it Yourself: Sausage Making

You may have read Devie the hound dog's version of making sausage.  Here's my version of the basics. I received the book Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman last Christmas.  Since then I experimented with making my own bacon, smoking various meats and cooking confit of all sorts.  Until recently, I had not attempted to make any sort of sausage.

Sausage is the heart of charcuterie, whether it is fresh breakfast sausage or a fine aged peperone.  This Christmas, I received the food grinder and sausage stuffer attachments for our Kitchen-Aid and am in the sausage making business.  I purchased enough hog casing from Butcher Packer for about 250 pounds of sausage and have all of the adjuncts (dextrose, sodium nitrite, sodium nitrate and kosher salt) needed to make all the popular styles.

Thus far I have made fresh garlic sausage, breakfast sausage, Sauccison Sec (French dry-cured country sausage) and Spanish chorizo (also dry-cured).  I package each in a vacuum sealed bag to store in the refrigerator or freezer until I eat it.

Whether the sausage is fresh or dried, I have distilled Ruhlman's excellent sausage making advice down to a few rules:

1. Always use at least 30% fat in your sausage.  If you are using a good fatty cut of pork like pork shoulder, this should be no problem.  Sometimes you will want to add extra fat with additional cuts like fresh side or back-fat.

2. Keep everything as cold as possible.  Seriously, almost frozen is where you want to be.  I didn't do this the first time around, and the result was a mushy unworkable mess.  My procedure now is to freeze the entire grinder attachment with blades attached before making the sausage.  I then spread my meat and fat on a cookie sheet i nthe freezer until it is getting stiff and crunchy (but not frozen).  The bowl you grind into and any other tools should also be frozen.  When stuffing your sausage, keep the sausage mix in a bowl set in ice (or snow, if it is plentiful in your area as it was this winter).  Your sausage quality depends on these steps to maintain a low temperature.

3. Keep everything clean.  I haven't had a contaminated batch of sausage yet, but my experience with beer brewing has taught me that cleanliness reduces the likelihood of a batch going bad.

4. Use the specified amount of salt or nitrites.  First of all, this makes the product taste authentic.  Secondly, the proper amount of sodium nitrite is critical for food safety especially in dry-cured products.  This is the ingredient that will keep your product from spoiling, or worse yet developing botulism.  Do not skimp or leave sodium nitrite out with the thought you are looking after your health.

5. Avoid air bubbles in the casing during the stuffing process.  If they develop, prick them with a sterile needle to remove them.  It will take practice and experience to get your stuffing technique down.

Rachel took this short video when I made chorizo:

Follow these rules, use a good recipe, and enjoy homemade forcemeats.  Happy stuffing!

Make it Yourself: Sausage Step by Step

I was writing this basic sausage making post and looking at pictures I took.  I noticed Devie in every.single.picture!  She has been an integral witness to all sausage making events so I thought it would be fun to narrate from her perspective. Sausage making is awesome.  Every time the bald guy (Alex) brings the meat grinder up from the basement, I rise from my day long nap to watch the happenings and wait for the humans to make a mistake.  Someday they will drop the entire batch on the floor and I will be ready to gobble it up.

First, the bald guy gets out the fresh pork.  He chops it into chunks and puts it in the freezer for a little while.

Next comes the grinding.  The very cold pork is forced through the very cold grinder.

The meat goes back in the freezer while the bald guy prepares any seasonings and prepares the Kitchen Aid for mixing. Chilled ground pork is mixed with seasonings and binders according to the recipe.  The bald guy always yammers on about the salt ratio so it must be important.

Sometimes the bald guy stops there and forms the sausage into fresh rounds.

Other times he gets out the stuffer.  He loads up the stuffer with rinsed casing.  Usually the tattooed lady (Rachel) has to help stuff the mixed meat into the casing.  I don't think she eats meat, so I guess it's ironic that she helps make sausage.

The bald guy likes to make one long stretch of sausage and twist it into links at the end.  If it's a fresh sausage, the bald guy packs it into vacuum sealed bags right away.

For an aged sausage, he hangs it in the basement for a week or two.  Oooh does aging sausage smell good!

If I'm really lucky they will cook some sausage for me as a treat.  Sometimes I get scraps of meat along the way by helping myself.  The bald guy and tattooed lady don't seem to like that.

After all this meat observing activity, I have to sleep for the rest of the day.  Watching the people cook is exhausting!

Stay tuned for Alex's view of sausage making including sources and references.